Page 33 of Broken Rejected Mate

But when Veva opens the truck, helps Sarina up and inside, she barely looks at me.

“Should we grab lunch?”

Her shrug is noncommittal. She reaches for the seatbelt, pulls it over her body. “Whatever you want.”

I stare at her, words bubbling up in my throat. I want to talk to her. Talk about the fact that when I fell asleep last night, she was with me, and when I woke up, she was gone. Talk about the fact that she very clearly scrubbed any trace of my scent off her body.

Right now, I want to tell her that Iwantmy scent on her. In fact, I want our scents together. I want to claim her like I should have all those years ago.

“Can we get chicken?” Sarina asks from the backseat, and I tear my eyes from her mother, meetings hers in the rearview, smiling.

“I know just the place,” I say. When I glance at Veva again, she’s looking steadily out the window.

***

Light from the moon spills in through the kitchen window when I pad in, rubbing my eyes, heading for the cabinet with the glasses.

I stop short when I smell it—her.

“Veva?” I ask, and a moment later, she emerges from the shadows. How the hell was she hiding like that? And how did it take me that long to realize she was down here with me?

“Sorry,” she whispers, running her hands up and down her arms. “I heard the steps, just casted to hide myself without thinking.”

I know that’s not true—she knew it was me. She was keeping herself hidden from me on purpose—that’s what she’s been doing from the moment she and Sarina got here. Trying to hide from me, to keep this from happening.

But I’m done hiding, done skirting around her.

“Veva,” I say, swallowing down the trepidation in my throat. “We need to talk.”

The sigh she lets out is long-suffering. For a moment, I expect her to turn and run back to the guest room, fall back on the tactics she’s been using to try and stay away from me.

Instead, she goes a bit soft, stepping forward and sliding onto a stool, resting her head in her hands on the counter.

“Okay.”

Stunned by how quickly she’s given into talking to me, it takes me a moment to regain myself, to remember what it was that I wanted to say to her. Why I said we needed to talk in the first place.

“Well?” she asks, sounding more tired than accusatory. “What do you want to talk about?”

I blink at her, then say, “That night.”

“What night?”

“Don’t—you know what night, Veva. The night you left.”

Even though it’s dark, I catch sight of her gritting her teeth, her jaw shifting, her eyes roaming over me. I straighten up, worried she might be looking for the best spot to lay a blow.

“Why do you want to talk about the night I left?” her voice is deadpan, completely devoid of emotion, and I realize this is just a different type of wall, a new method of keeping me out.

“I came to your mother’s house the next morning,” I say, stepping toward her. It’s going to be harder for her to shut me out if I’m standing right in front of her.

I watch her nose twitch, see the way she catches my scent.

The scent of her mate.

“I know.”

That stuns me—I wasn’t expecting her to know that. I was saving it as proof. Proof that I would have taken her as my mate, even if that’s not necessarily true.

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